In my daily forays (I call it "jogging," younger folks tell me it's "walking") in that jewel of USG national parks conservation, Rock Creek Park, I find that I can fulfill my humble duties as a grateful member of our Republic by, in a small way, picking up litter/trash there on a near-daily basis.
image from
In recent years, the younger I get, I have established a schedule ("discipline, young man, discipline" is what you need, or so somebody might have told me, as I probably misremember in my prep school) in order to get rid -- in a central but small corner of the imperial capital -- trash in one of the main roads leading (Tilden Street) onto the Park itself.
One/once in the Park, you can walk to the Zoo, starting north or south.
The Zoo is an admirable Smithsonian institution (although I do pity the well-cared animals imprisoned there, as I -- quite frankly -- often cannot tell the difference between the animals captured and their human captors).
My trash collections (rash recollections? -- no nightmares yet) down the Park as I "jog" (yes, I begin by going downhill; forgive my years) ends with (very slowly), going uphill, to my entrance to the Zoo (opening at 8:00 am), freed of a sense of trash responsibility, which after all should be cleaned up by Zoo authorities, not by an aged jogger pretending to go through puberty by physical "excersise."
As I "jog," I carry so-very-unenvironmentally-correct plastic bags, depending on the day (a small one - costs five cents at the local Giant supermarket; a large one -- my preferred one -- ten cents).
As I enter the Zoo, I drop my trash items, quite selectively, into two trash bins -- one for glass/plastic, the other for other trash.
Sometimes, despite my efforts to "follow the rules," I don't make the above distinction -- my proletarian thought: "just dump the capitalist shit wherever it goes." Please, am no Marxist I, "Born in the USA."
You'd be amazed what I pick up while "jogging": Everything from rubber gloves to condoms, to plastic "water" bottles filled with yellow liquid (urine?). No corpses/bones yet.
But most frequent, aside from paper and plastic bottles: beer cans, not always semi-empty wine bottles (oddly enough, with their corks on) -- and junk food bags, with their "napkins," plastic ketchup containers/eating utensils, large styrophaom burger containers (seldom empty), "soda," I presume cardboard receptibles with plastic covers with a straw inserted upon them (I can't help but think: is there a sexual connotation to such a forceful entry?).
To set the record straight: I first place my near-daily "jog"
trash pick-ups in garbage cans in the Pierce Mills Area in Rock Creek. Second, I place them in the bins at the entrance of the Zoo (Rock Creek Park entrance).
I hope I won't be sued for breaking DC/Federal law.